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This Week in
American History

September 26 — October 2, 1937

'More Power to You,' Says President Franklin Roosevelt at Bonneville Dam

On Sept. 28, 1937, President Franklin Roosevelt travelled to Oregon to dedicate the massive Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River. Bonneville was designed to be part of a coordinated irrigation, navigation, and electric-power project which included the still-under-construction Grand Coulee Dam further up the Columbia. This was the third time that Roosevelt had travelled to the Oregon site, and he had seen the potential of the Columbia River's untapped power on his first visit, when he stumped the area during his 1920 Vice Presidential campaign.

Plans for the Bonneville Dam dated back to 1933, when the National Industrial Recovery Act was passed as a measure to put people back to work on both large and small public works projects. When President Roosevelt signed the legislation on June 16, he said: "In my Inaugural, I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country."

One of the ways in which to encourage the growth of modern, high-technology industry, at the same time as providing a better life for America's citizens, was the provision of inexpensive electric power. Roosevelt had invited the World Power Conference to hold its third meeting in Washington, D.C. in September of 1936, and at the end of his speech to the gathering of almost 3,000 delegates from 52 nations, he told them what he was about to do to dramatically increase America's supply of power.

Said the President, "At Boulder Dam on the mighty Colorado the gates were closed months ago; a great lake has come into being behind the dam; generating equipment has been installed in the power plant; and at this moment the powerful turbines are awaiting the relatively tiny impulse of electric current which will flow from the touch of my hand on the button which you see beside me on the desk, to stir them to life, to stir them into creative activity—to generate power. Boulder Dam, in the name of the people of the United States, to whom you, Boulder Dam, are a symbol of greater things in the future, and in the honored presence of guests from many Nations, I call you to life!"

In the same speech to the conference, Roosevelt cited a statement by Dr. Charles Steinmetz, a noted electrical engineer and scientist, who said, "electricity is expensive because it is not widely used, and at the same time it is not widely used because it is expensive." Said Roosevelt, "Notwithstanding reductions in rates and increase of consumption since his day—which, by the way, have demonstrated the truth of his words—his observation still holds true. There is a vicious circle which must be broken, and a wise public policy will help to break it."

The construction of Boulder Dam had been planned before Roosevelt became President, and he had helped to speedily bring it on line. But Bonneville and Grand Coulee Dams were Roosevelt's special projects in the Pacific Northwest, and he signed the allocation of funding for them on Sept. 26, 1933. Ten months later, he visited Oregon and Washington to see what had been accomplished, and told his audience that "It has been my conception, my dream, that while most of us are alive we would see great sea-going vessels come up the Columbia River as far as the Dalles.... And, when we get that done and moving, I hope that we can also make navigation possible from the Dalles up, so we may have barge transportation into the wheat country."

"There is another reason for the expenditure of money in very large amounts on the Columbia. In fact there are a good many reasons. While we are improving navigation we are creating power, more power, and I always believe in the old saying of 'more power to you.' I do not believe that you can have enough power for a long time to come, and the power we shall develop here is going to be power which for all time is going to be controlled by Government."

Senator Dill of Washington State looked up a speech that Roosevelt had made in Spokane during the 1920 campaign, and Roosevelt quoted from it. It began: "Coming through today on the train has made me think pretty deeply. When you cross the Mountain States and that portion of the Coast States that lie well back from the ocean, you are impressed by those great stretches of physical territory, just land, territory now practically unused but destined some day to contain the homes of thousands and hundreds of thousands of citizens like us, a territory to be developed by the Nation and for the Nation."

Roosevelt continued, "I could not help thinking, as everyone does, of all that water running down unchecked to the sea." Fourteen years later, the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam, with its development of irrigation, was expected to take care of the resettlement and employment of 500,000 people, mostly dislocated farm families from the drought-ravaged Great Plains and other areas with poor soil quality.

By early 1937, the Bonneville Dam was nearing completion, and Roosevelt appointed a committee on national power policy to make suggestions for the administration of the Bonneville project. These recommendations were sent to Congress on Feb. 24, and included provisions to ensure that the electric power generated by the Bonneville Dam was used to further the general welfare and not used by small groups of monopolists. The administrator of the dam was authorized to provide electric transmission lines, substations, and other facilities to bring the inexpensive power to the consumers.

Furthermore, "In order to insure that the power development at Bonneville project will be carried out for the benefit of the general public, and particularly of domestic and rural consumers, the administrator should, in disposing of electric energy, give preference and priority to public and cooperative agencies, namely to states, districts, counties, and municipalities, including agencies or subdivisions thereof, and to cooperative organizations of citizens not organized or doing business for profit but primarily for the purpose of supplying electric energy to their members as nearly as possible at cost."

Fifty percent of the electric energy produced was reserved for sale to such public and cooperative agencies, and in case of conflicting or competing applications between public and private agencies, the public or cooperative agencies, such as farm cooperatives, were to be given priority. No application from a public or cooperative agency could be denied on the grounds that a proposed bond issue necessary to enable such an agency to distribute the power had not yet been authorized or marketed.

Finally, in September, Bonneville Dam was ready to come online, and the President wended his way toward the dedication, stopping in various cities and towns of the West as he travelled. In Boise, Idaho, Roosevelt stated that "One reason why a President of the United States ought to travel throughout the country and become familiar with every state is that he has a great obligation to think about the days when he will no longer be President, to think about the next generation and the generation after that."

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